After reading this article on NakedPR blog about Free Press Release services, I decided to check some of these sites out a little more in depth. I spent quite a bit of time preparing my release and I knew that I would be submitting it to the paid service available at PR.com but I wanted to evaluate the offerings of the free services and see if they lived up to what was promised. It is important to note that none of the services I sampled allowed you to submit a press release with a hyperlink for free. Every single service I checked out charged some small fee for inserting a url. most of the services were ala carte and you received the most basic of services por gratis, with each additional element incurring a surcharge.

This article is divided into three categories, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

The Good

I-Newswire
http://www.i-newswire.com
Rating: Thumbs Up
Requires registration: No
Email Verification : No
Links: For a fee
Turnaround Time: Less than 12 hours
PageRank: 5
Very quick and effective free press release. Our release was on it’s way within 12 hours. They offer a $25 package that includes: Premium distribution, reach unlimited 3rd party portals, add your web site address, no Google AdSense ads on your release, stays on top of day’s releases. Newsisfree.com inclusion and PressRadar.com inclusion. The next release I do will definitely be a $25 package release through i-newswire.

1 888 Press Release
http://www.1888pressrelease.com
Rating: Thumbs Up
Requires registration: Yes
Email Verification : No
Links: For a fee
Turnaround Time: Less than 6 hours
PageRank: 5
Gold Upgrade – Only $4.99 payable by Paypal. Allows ability to insert 2 URLs within the press release (if applicable and within the context of the press release), attach a file to press release for visitor to download and attach a logo. The press release I sent through this service hit all it’s target audiences, was included in Google News and the turnaround time was the fastest of all the services I tried.

The Bad

24-7 Press Release
http://www.24-7pressrelease.com
Rating: Thumbs Down
Requires registration: Yes
Email Verification : Yes
Links: For a fee
Claims to have statistics, increased search engine visibility, image attachments, pdf attachments and document attachments available at $45. Only problem was they took myregistration details and never sent the required confirmation email that is required to submit a release. What a stupid reason to lose business. I can’t take a service that requires email validation seriously especially these days with all the spam filters and spam assasin installed on the majority of mail servers. Thumbs down.

PR9
http://www.pr9.net
Rating: Thumbs Down
Requires registration: Yes
Email Verification : No
Links: For a fee
Turnaround Time: N/A
This site is just plain dead. After bothering to register and submit our press release, we waited and waited and checked the category we’d submitted into for our story to appear. After two days, we noticed there had been no releases in our category since May 03, 2007. Apparently these people aren’t adding sites, or just aren’t adding free sites.

The Ugly

The Open Press
http://www.theopenpress.com

Fill out the registration form and this comes up.

Very unprofessional. This one was filed into the trash.

Overall, I found two really good services out of the five sampled. Other than that I submitted a paid release through PR.com and paid the $25 basic listing fee. PR.com delivered as promised, much faster than promised. The only thing I would do over is that I’d pay the extra $20 for a link next time. The staff was very helpful in editing my release and at first I was annoyed when they sent it back to me for editing but after the second time I had to re-edit, I had learned a few valuable lessons about writing an effective release and I was thankful that PR.com’s diligent staff were there to help me out for my measley $29 release.

In all honesty, I don’t mind paying $100 for a good release considering many corporations pay in excess of $250-$1000 per release (which includes the copy), and the good part is for roughly $75 you can spread your release over the three services I’ve highlighted here.